LiquidBandage

First, ask yourself what you want the character to be able to do. Then ask yourself what you want the character to be able to do well. Then ask yourself in what situations your character will play (everything everywhere, solo, just missions, TFs, whatever) and with whom (do you have a regular play group that covers most bases for buffs). Evaluate what dangers you expose yourself to when playing (close in support, pulling, solo, getting hit by AoEs, etc). Then evaluate where you have vulnerabilities and judge where you want to reinforce and skimp. A lot of the answers to those questions will inform what you will want to target for your build. Another thing you should be aware of is your build order (i.e. when you select which powers) for the purposes of exemplaring. If you build to someone else's defined standards, you will inherit their biases and vulnerabilities (knowingly or unknowingly).

It is an easy form of engagement for the HC crew to orchestrate that anyone can participate. It is a low bar that allows for a multitude of people to participate in a community event. It serves as an opportunity to introduce people (like minds maybe) to the other inhabitants of the HC community. A handful of messages in a chat window that people can't avoid isn't that much of a hardship given the upsides. There are still ways to see all of the chat in your windows that isn't these unavoidable advertisements. If you are so bothered by text showing up in your window, right click and choose Clear. Minimize the window. Switch to the Combat window and watch it get drowned out by all of the reports. If chatting is your main focus, enlarge the window so it has less of an impact (scrolling other messages away). Do you get similarly bent out of shape when the monthly announcements of the donation window opening & closing?

Melee sets extend outside of the original vision of Defenders would by my guess. Even though primary sets like Raditation with Choking Cloud encourage you to stand knee deep in melee range with no mez protection. Support + Melee powerset combinations lay outside the designs of the original architectures (and assumptions) and I am ok with that for now. If they designed a new AT to be Melee + Support, I'd be down with that, but as it stands, you can sorta do that with Defenders as it is. It does not fit as many concepts as we would like, but it is the option we have atm.

One thing I neglected to mention regarding slotting is this: Do NOT get caught up in slotting for the peak of performance and optimal enhancements while you are leveling UNLESS you are confident in how the build performs and know that the investment will be worthwhile (i.e. you understand the mechanics and know that this power is a lynchpin to how the character/AT performs). Slot for overall character effectiveness first then tweak for procs and globals later on.

I hear MiDs is a good resource, but I have never used it myself. Many builds only take into account what the character looks like at 50. The journey from 1 to 50 can be a bit more amorphous as powers get slotted or added to the overall picture. One good resource is built directly into the UI interface. Click on POWERS -> COMBAT ATTIRBUTES and take a look at which powers affect whatever statistic the most then slot those powers as you level up (provided the desired enh impacts that aspect of the power). Every ten levels you get a free respec, so take advantage of it to experiment and make mistakes if necessary. Learning how powers work is way more valuable than following someone else's recipe for what they believe is the end-all-be-all of character builds. Many/most characters/ATs do not develop into their full potential until the mid 30s either due to powers not being available or you just not having enough slots to spread around to make things effective. Don't give up on a character unless it is clearly evident that your expectations are not being met by the functionality of the power set(s). Sometimes activation times make things clunky when you want to one-two punch something. Or the scale of effectiveness does not match up with the power description (this is where MiDs or looking at the detailed info of your powers can really help). If you are going to craft basic IOs, I suggest only crafting two tiers of them (level 25 & 50). Level 25 basic IOs are essentially the equivalent of a level 25 SO enhancement, but they never turn off. And when you do a respec, you get to pop them all out (to potentially use on another alt, this saves a lot of money in the beginning). Don't get caught up in upgrading every five levels, it is a big inf sink and it doesn't provide that much of an upgrade over what you had in level 25 IOs for your effort. Designate one character to do all of your basic IO crafting initially and try to get patterns memorized (it halves the inf cost and you no longer need to buy that recipe). That way you can feed all of your alts IOs. Also, do some shopping on the AH for those basic IO recipes. You can get some good deals, especially if you are patient. Paying the exorbitant recipe price via the crafting interface is a massive inf sink that you can potentially avoid. If you know for sure that you have a firm grasp on how a power works within the framework of how you play as you level up, go ahead and slot a crafted IO set with whatever bonuses it confers. If you aren't sure, don't waste the time & inf on it quite yet (wait for after you hit 50 and unlock your Alpha). Learn the ins & outs of the Summer Blockbuster event (via the LFG interface). It rewards a random Overwhelming Force enh that can be used by any character and is great for young alts. In general, it helps to emphasize slotting your attack powers as you level up, especially at low levels. This makes it more likely that you can defeat enemies quickly (i.e. before they get to wail on you for multiple cycles). And fully slotting allows you to slot an enh set (like Overwhelming Force or ATO) to take full advantage of the set bonuses. Also, after you reach level 40, you can run the Market Crash TF and you get a purple recipe the first time you complete it. If you don't get a recipe that you like, don't worry, hold on to it. You can craft it then convert the resulting enhancement to a different enhancement (in the same set or across to a different set of the same rarity) with a degree of randomness. Eventually you will get something to your liking (at the cost of random drop resources that you accrue via playing the game). Pay attention to which Task Forces/Strike Forces are the weekly target (WST), they provide double merits the first time you complete them during the week. Open up the LFG window and scroll through to see which ones are the WST (highlighted in red). The WST changeover occurs Sunday night 9PM (Pacific). Completing most mission story arcs provides merits (20-ish) and can be done via Ouro too. Hamidon kills are 80 (for the first kill of the day, then 40 each afterwards). There are many avenues to generating merits, find what works best for you. If you have more inf than you know what to do with, buy whatever on the AH. If you don't, look at the merit reward kiosks for things like ATOs and purple recipes or the odd recipe (usually the one with a proc). Save your Empyrean Merits for covering the incarnate material gaps as you craft up the Incarnate powers. Threads vs Shards is only really a debate for your Alpha power(s). Everything else is based on Threads. So make your own decisions as to what best suits your desires at the time. If you just door sit on an AE farm, then ignore this post.

FF/Psi Defender My mind powers augment the team, keep foes at bay and blast them into uncomfortableness. I may not be the damage dealing god that brings doom from above, but I am the one that brings Defense, ToHit and sneaky psi attacks to pierce your puny defenses.

Then let me post my thoughts on the subject: No, leave it the way it is.

They scale down to level.

There are a few solutions to your problem that already exist in game. (1) When you zone into a mission, move somewhere else so other characters that zone in are much less likely to push you around. (2) Take and use a Stealth power of some sort so you don't get spotted when you get pushed. (3) Pay closer attention to who zones in & when so you are the pushER and not the pushEE. (i.e. wait for everyone else to zone first) (4) Stop teaming with seven other Masterminds and all of their rude pets. (5) Mention the problem you are experiencing to the team so they can help in that regard (either have them zone in first or don't zone in with ALL of their pets summoned). (6) Get a self rez power and embrace the floor hugging when it happens and work towards the damage taken badges. (7) Have teammates buff you up the wazoo before you step inside in case there is a problem to make it less likely you eat floor.

If you are looking to improve survivability, the randomness/unpredictability of a pet will not help in that regard.

Yeah, look around the area further away from the marker to find areas that lead under the ground level. Alternately, go to the P2W vendor and by the Mission Teleporter power for 1,000,000 inf.

Peacebringer, Squid-mode, aka treat it like a Blaster. You get all of your pertinent powers at/by level 6. You have four good pertinent attack powers that are augmented by your chosen form. You essentially have a travel power any time you are in your chosen form. You don't have a whole lot of other extraneous powers to distract your slotting regimen as you level up (fewer mistakes). After you fully slot your squid powers, you can pick up Lobster and repeat the process, plus it provides a good bit of survivability. It isn't complicated, it is fun and it is relatively cheap in terms of crafting/upgrading enhancements over the course of your progression. The other option would be any sort of character with Regen.

You have to go out of your way to engineer a multiple-hold character. Do not rely on powers or IO sets that provide a "chance" for hold. Those end up not being a hold and the durations are so short that it does not matter. The keys to Mending Mitos are: - stack as high a magnitude hold as possible - ensure the durations of those holds are for as long as possible - debuff the mito resistance as much as possible - debuff the mito defense & regen as much as possible - provide mez protection (stun, terror, knock back) - provide +ToHit and/or +Damage to the team - provide resistance to Toxic - heal or rez where/when you can, but not over the priority of holds

This is a key point. The duration of the hold matters, look at the detailed information on your powers and figure out a good sequence so you provide as much overlap as possible. If you have more than one hold, fire the longer duration first then follow with the shorter duration. The hyper-buffed state of the initial engagement compresses the recharge windows so you will naturally get more overlap, but it is a good habit to practice anyways.

Do you want an honest answer? Play a build that focuses on team success. Provide some sort of force multiplier to your team (debuffs, mez protection, toxic resist, maybe some healing if people aren't themselves debuffed into the floor) AND focus on Holds that you can stack as fast as possible. On Indom, I rotate through 6-10 different characters on days where we say hi to Kevin. Each character helps with Mending Mitos. (1) Controller - Illusion/Kinetics -> Has only one single target Hold, but I supplement with other support powers. Power Boost + Siphon Speed + Speed Boost + Increase Density (for mez prot)+ Fulcrum Shift + Transfusion (for -regen and the heal). Fire off the Hold, then pack in as many other things while you wait for the hold to recharge. I also fire off the Control Incarnate Hybrid ability for increased magnitude holds. (2) Controller - Gravity/Sonic -> Has only one single target Hold and Singularity, but I supplement with other support powers. Sonic Siphon, Sonic Dispersion (mez prot & toxic res), Sonic Barrier (toxic res), Clarity (mez prot). Fire off the hold then, then Sonic Siphon then Propel, rinse & repeat. (3) Controller - Elec/Elec -> Has only the single Hold, but lots of support. Faraday Cage to provide mez protection and Toxic resist, then cycle through the Circuit powers as needed. The single target hold always has priority, but each time we target a new mito, I deploy a Faraday Cage first. (4) Controller - Fire/Thermal -> Has only one single target Hold. This character has the Control Incarnate Hybrid, so that gets fired off as we charge in. Forge is a good damage boost for others. I Heat Exhaust & Melt the first mito and wait for both to recharge by the time we engage Hamidon directly. Thaw is useful for mez protection. (5) Defender - Emp/Dark -> Has a single target Hold (Char from Flame mastery). This character has Fortitude on rotation as soon at it is available and it goes on as many people as I can toss it on. Clear Mind goes on the person I am targeting through. (6) Defender - Rad/Beam Rifle -> No holds (not even Choking Cloud), but I bring an extensive amount of debufs and -regen. (7) Corruptor - Ice/Poison -> Four single target Holds, the Control Incarnate Hybrid, Vanguard Medal accolade power and a host of debuffs. Venemous Gas + Weaken Resolve (Force of Will pool) + Weaken + Envenom is pretty devestating and can be rolled non-stop. The debufs take priority (I use my Aim for these), then I roll the holds. (8) Mastermind - Robot/Time -> Two single target holds (with good long durations). This character has a few debuffs and a few buffs, but the main focus is rolling out the two holds. (9) Sentinel - Energy/Regen -> Just the one Hold (Dominate from Psionic Mastery), but I also roll Tactics and Assault. (10) Blaster - Beam/Devices -> Just the one Hold (Cryo Freeze from Munitions Mastery), but I also have debuffs. Surveillance is a handy debuff. There is a -regen component to Beam attacks. Also, look into a targeting macro to target mitos in case the targetter dies or doesn't show up. Pay attention to how the League manages the separate groups of mitos (blue/yellow/green). Is there a particular pattern taken? If that is known, you can lean closer to one side or the other to hopefully not get walloped by mito fire as often. Or in some cases, know where to move so you draw fire and position yourself away from the group so they DON'T get splashed (and debuffed and mez'd) by it. Of all the characters that I bring to help with green mitos (I have others I bring for just pure range or melee for yellows), I enjoy the Corruptor & illusion controller the most. You can just see the difference in how fast mitos melt before your eyes.

There is no one answer to your question. It all depends on (1) your primary/secondary power set choices and (2) your build and (3) how you play. I have Venomous Gas on my Ice/Poison corruptor and I love it. It only really comes into play against AVs/GMs/Hamidon or if the group has a tank that I follow into groups. As soon as I get my target within the aura, I stack Weaken Resolve (Force of Will pool) then Weaken (poison) then Envenom (poison) and go to town (either damage or stacking single target Holds). Whatever it is, it melts fast. I typically leave VG on all the time and use it as the flow of play dictates. If I see a troublesome foe (Fake Nem or Paragon Protector etc) that won't just go down in two hits, I swoop in and get the VG going and debuff away.

We all have seen the rooms that have two+ large groups in one room within line of sight of each other. And you know that if you don't pull one group away, the other group(s) will take notice and pile on in a big mess. As a tank, you already have aggro on the first group and any attempt to taunt the other group(s) will fall flat until enough of the initial mob die to bring you under the aggro cap. In this situation, you have to rely on the other members of the team to recognize the danger and manage it. For a group that has played together before, that isn't unreasonable. For a pug that could have wildly varying degrees of experience & strength of build, there is a higher degree of chance that the scene will devolve into chaos and face planting. Do I understand why the aggro cap is where it is at? yes, and part of me agrees with it (to force teams to think about how they engage). But a part of me really misses aggroing half a map and dumpster diving. I think uncapping the aggro limit would be dangerous to the health of the game as it would steer groups to behave in that manner and make that the expected approach all of the time. If the HC team decides to raise the cap, I wouldn't complain, nor would I complain if they left it right where it is.

No one is forcing you to create an exhaustive list of all the possible combinations of teleport related things. If it is that much of a hassle & "boring", why are you whining to the forums about it?

No, not true. You can stand in Pocket D for a total of 60 min and that will provide you with the Pocket D beacon.

The Team Teleporter takes a handful of seconds to activate, then it pulses at regular intervals over the duration of the power to pickup people that arrive at the location "late". It also is synchronized to the current active mission, so if the team leader changes the active mission (or the Task/Strike Force mission sequence updates), confirming the teleport will send you to the new location. I have thrown down an Ouro portal inside my SG base, then swapped characters, entered the base and tried to click on the portal but it responded as "inactive". So sharing Ouro portals between your characters might not be universally flexible.

This is my build for INV/Dark and I have fun with it all the time. Ball Lightning comes back fast enough that you can throw it every group. You get synergy with Invincibility & Soul Drain when you jump into the middle of a pack. You have two single target ranged powers (Mu Lightning fires fast) to pick up stragglers. It has plenty of AoE to hit what you need to hit for aggro.

You are expressly not doing that (crowd sourcing opinions on a topic is not critical thinking). You are asking for someone else to think for you about someone else's opinions with no further insight into the interaction. Now that you have provided more information, we can probably speak more intelligently on your interaction with said person (level 50, Brute, incarnates, power leveling, more inf than needed on hand). If his slant on the game is power leveling (running AE farms), then yes, from his perspective, his advice is correct (Tanks being pointless). In a general sense, damage is king. There is also value in surviving damage so others can deal their king-sized damage and not eat floor in the process. You are looking for someone else to validate your choices. Who does that benefit other than you? Are you having fun with your INV/SS (sounds like it)? Why would you be concerned with someone else's opinion about Tanks if he himself doesn't play one and probably not played in the same manner as you? If you are having fun, please continue to have fun playing your character. Don't let someone else color your perception of fun in a game. One thing that needs to be understood is that CoX in a broad sense does not employ a narrow set of rules for how to be successful in game. Now, for some user created content, things are hyper tweaked to make it narrowly focused. So that colors some people perceptions of usefulness.

Consider who it is that is offering their opinion. What do they have as a frame of reference? They posit something and offer no supporting evidence. Does that seem suspicious to you in any way? Use some critical thinking skills. Observe a bit. Ask about endgame content and how it works. Then try to reverse engineer how your characters can help in those situations. Then re-evaluate how this "someone" told you something about how X is worthless, you should do Y instead.

You spent more time crafting your OP than it would take to: 1.) Go to the Atlas P2W vendor 2.) Spend 5,000 inf to purchase 30 minutes of Jetpack time 3.) Put the Jetpack button on your bar 4.) Travel to Pocket D via: - Any of the Pocket D doors in other zones - SG Base portal 5.) Transit through the ski door (like you would to participate in Winter events there) 6.) Click the Jetpack button to turn your Jetpack on 7.) Fly up and back towards the Pocket D dancefloor structure 8.) Ram into the floating box truck near the driver's side door -> giving you an explore badge for Pocket D, thus enabling the Pocket D option in the LRT power

One design pillar of City of Heroes has been character developing around the N-vulnerabilty philosophy of comic book heroes. You can have an all powerful being, but there is at least one gaping hole that can be exploited to defeat said being. Superman is vulnerable to kryptonite (and has no defense against magic iirc), but otherwise he is invulnerable. If you look at Tank builds, all of the powersets allow you to reach most caps depending on slotting, but you still have a couple deficiencies and probably one giant hole. With teamwork (i.e. buffs), you can shore up most holes to a satisfactory degree. As you said, Hamidon was the endgame for a while and the devs needed a special twist to make it so a zone full of characters couldn't just craft a League setup (buffs), to marginalize risk and roflstomp the endgame. Hamidon employs many defenses (mito swarm, mito blooms) and dishes out "special damage" to force a raid to jump through specific hoops to be successful. The implementation of EoE inspirations (60 seconds of 100% resistance to "special damage") makes it so you need to use them or be lucky enough to not get hit. You can still get hit and take damage even if you have an EoE active. Mez protection can also be important (CC teams that take on Mending Mitos often have problems getting Stunned, Terrorized and knocked back). This is my solution to your problem. Step 1: Lock the zone to level 44. Under the current set of behaviors, if you are more than five levels above the team/instance level, you have access to powers at that level +5. So under this scenario, the moment you walk into the zone, you have access to powers up to & including your level 49 power. But you won't have access to your Incarnates. Balance/rebalance GMs, Hamidon and Mitos for being level 44 if necessary. This should sorta simulate conditions prior to when Incarnates were available. It should still be possible to two-step Hamidon (or three-step) under these conditions. Step 2: Consider rolling back the zone cap of 50 characters to what it was prior to the change in 2019. We used to be able to field more than one full League (six teams of eight) in the zone for a Hamidon Raid, but it quickly became a roflstomp blitz that completely ignored the encounter mechanics, especially with Lore pets. If all Incarnate powers are unavailable, consider allowing more than 50 people in the zone again. Depending on how many people you have in zone, you can one/two/three step the Hamidon encounter or maybe Hamikaze. Maybe a League composition emphasis on debuffs could help skew towards a one-step or a kaze style assault. Step 3: Implement a Power Pool that helps with "special damage", aka untyped damage attacks. The pivot of the EoE inspiration being the player's main decision making point concerning the Hamidon encounter is heavy handed. If you run out before the encounter is done, there is basically nothing you can do except leave the blast zone or hope you are lucky. Plus it is completely random as to how many drops you get from killing GMs and the spawning of Hamidon is totally random as well. Step 4: Let the playerbase design their characters around how they want to attack content. When a player looks at the after action report of a failed Hamidon assault, all you see is a wall of "special damage" before you eat dirt. Once a bloom occurs there is a very small window where you can either kill Hamidon or get overwhelmed with stacked attacks. Most people do not understand the mechanics of Hamidon and just show up to punch the hit point bag (sometimes using EoE, or not). Their only references for improvement are "do what the raid leader says" or to look at the Info on the EoE inspiration and wonder what went wrong. ***************************** Power Pool: Mysterious Power You ventured into a realm you were not supposed to see and have been forever altered. Or you have been visited by a Greek God and had a special gift bestowed upon you to serve a higher purpose. You don't have a full grasp on what this power means, but it can let you operate outside of normal rules of the universe as Earthlings know them. Power 1: Touched by the Abyss (or Gift of the Gods) This power provides a two pronged vulnerability. Your defensive soft caps are reduced by a small percentage (5% maybe) and your resistance to "special damage" caps at 80%. And your team gets a special foe inserted into mobs you face in instances, sorta like Quantums for Kheldians. It does "special damage" (aka untyped) attacks and generally tries to defeat you. This could be an alien sent to retrieve whatever power you stole or emissary from a competing Greek God to thwart whatever grand plan. Now for the good part. You get a Defense against "special damage", like 15% maybe (the number is just there to give you a rough idea as to how effective I envision it to be). Power 2: Gift from Beyond This power is only selectable if Power 1 has been taken. This power operates like the P2W power that generates inspirations. It is on a 3 minute cooldown. It creates a EoE inspiration. You can augment this power with Recharge, Damage, Accuracy, Endurance Modification, Heal, Defense or Resistance enhancements. Doing so will reduce the cooldown (recharge) and/or skew the randomness to favor a particular type of inspiration (dam/acc/end/heal/def/resist) to represent your benefactor's specialty/background. Additionally, this power augments what happens when you consume a EoE inspiration. Along with the standard "special damage resistance" you also get the equivalent of a random small inspiration buff that aligns with the randomness percentages as dictated by the enh slotting of this power. For reference, you can only eat one EoE inspiration at a time. Power 3: Empowered Strike (or Divine Smite) This power is only selectable if Power 1 has been taken. This is a special attack that is untyped and has no melee or ranged classification. It has a range/reach of 15ft, single target, long recharge. It is important that the customization of this power be extensive (lots of alternate animations that provide melee and ranged interpretations). Flip whatever switches are required to disallow the slotting of IO sets in this power. Power 4: Clarity of Purpose This power is only selectable if Power 1 has been taken. This click power zeroes out your "special damage" defense you got in Power 1, boosts regeneration & recovery and buffs resistance to regen/recovery debuffs. You also get the equivalent of a small mez protection inspiration buff. Using this power locks out the use of Conduit of Power. There are times where you have an EoE active and you start taking damage anyways and it just piles on. There is nothing you can do about it. You just keep getting hit and all healing is debuffed into the floor. All you can do (if you aren't also mez'd) is run/jump/fly away and wait out the debuff then heal back up. Hamidon & the Mitos sometimes just decide that damage is gonna leak through on you and there is nothing you can do about it. Power 5: Conduit of Power You can only select this power if you have selected two other powers in this pool prior. You channel your special gift to protect your team, but at great cost to you. This click power zeroes out your "special damage" defense you got in Power 1, halves your hit point pool and reduces your resistance to "special damage" to a cap of 50% for the duration. It also provides +X% defense (all damage types including "special") to everyone else on your team within 80ft. Using this power excludes you from benefiting from anyone else on your team that uses Conduit of Power. Using this power locks out the use of Clarity of Purpose.